Lahey Clinical Performance ACO

Recently, The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) accepted our application to be an Accountable Care Organization (ACO). Accountable Care Organizations are groups of doctors, hospitals, and other healthcare providers, who come together voluntarily to give coordinated high-quality care to their Medicare Fee-for-Service patients. We are proud to be accepted as an ACO. Being an ACO means we are a patient-centered organization where the patient and providers are true partners in care decisions with the goal to deliver seamless, high-quality care for Medicare Fee-for-Service beneficiaries.

If your physician is participating in the Lahey Clinical Performance ACO, you should have received a letter informing you that your physician or physician practice is now a member of the Lahey Clinical Performance ACO. Under this program, your primary care physician and specialists will work together with Medicare to deliver a high quality of care that meets your unique, individual needs.

Your doctor’s participation in this program does not change anything about your Medicare benefits. This is not a Medicare Advantage plan or an HMO plan. You still have the right to use any doctor or hospital that accepts Medicare, at any time. However, the advantage is that your doctor will have access to more information and data about your care and health to help make better decisions.

Your Health InformationTo help us give you the right care in the right place at the right time, in April 2013 Medicare plans to start sharing certain health information with us about your care. This information will include things like visits to the doctor or hospital, medical conditions, and prescriptions you’ve had in the past and moving forward. Having this information will help us and your other healthcare providers participating in our ACO give you high-quality care, because we’ll have the most up-to-date information about your health.

Privacy – You Control Your Health InformationYour privacy is very important to us, and you control the use of your personal health information. Like Medicare, we have important safeguards in place to make sure all your medical information is safe. Please note that even if you do not want to share your personal health information with Lahey Clinical Performance ACO for use in coordinating your care, Medicare will still need to use your information for some purposes, including certain financial calculations and determining the quality of care provided by your physician and Lahey Clinical Performance ACO. Also, as part of assessing the quality of care your physician and Lahey Clinical Performance ACO are providing, Medicare may share some of your personal health information with us.

Choosing Not To Share Your Health InformationIf you choose, you can ask Medicare not to share your personal health information with us by doing one of the following:

Complete and sign the “Declining to Share Personal Health Information” form in your doctor’s office.

If you want to ask Medicare not to share your information with us, you should take one of the three steps described above. Even after Medicare begins to share some patient information with us in April 2013, you may always ask Medicare to stop this information-sharing in the future.

Lahey Clinical Performance Network (LCPN) ACO has been selected by Becker’s Hospital Review as one of the 100 Accountable Care Organizations to Know in the country. ACOs were selected on the number of physicians involved and lives covered, the ACO’s lifespan, as well as its risk-based arrangements and new agreements with payers. LCPN joined the Medicare Shared Savings Program in January 2013. The list of 100 ACOs is viewable here http://bit.ly/16QkwGZ